Obama still can and probably will catch up in the next two debates. However, one thing for sure, if the country is dumb enough to vote a republican administration back in like it did with Bush, the same things that followed the Bush era will follow, you have only yourselves to blame then. You will reap what you sow, so sow carefully.

After listening to portions of the 'debate', I have to say American politicians have zero clue as to what debate is. Excruciating horrible staccaco utterances, reminding more of the play pen than something worth listening to.

the ultimate reply for anything Mittens is,'sure sure, until you change your mind again'. Mittens might be a reasonable candidate. It's his party and the fact it pwns that is his most objectionable aspect.

I do feel a little bad for Mitt... I mean really, the guy champions this incredible health care law as governor, fights for marriage equality, defends social programs, and now he can't talk about any of it. He has to run from it! Poor guy should be a Democrat.

Substance or not notwithstanding, what did Mr. Obama in IMO in this debate was his projection of aloofness and at times the appearance of contempt while Mr. Rommney was shown being attentive and engaging the whole time.

Debates are like boxing. The first round doesn't count. The second round doesn't count. Only the last one does. Mr Romney like most ignorant Republicans is walking into a trap set by humans with souls.

Failed? And what would you have done? Austerity? Austerity works like draining the swamp. When will Mission Accomplished Republicans be paying for their two failed wars? Their deficits? Yeah never and socialize onto the rest of us because that is what ignorant adolescents do.

With the exception of the 2nd "bailout" (which was not a failure), none of that had anything to do with Obama. The first bailout occurred while he was in the senate, and apparently you didn't get the memo about the Federal Reserve being a fully independant body (everything you mentioned except the 2 bailouts was action by the Fed, or events that have not, and probably will not, occur). Please educate yourself before commenting and making a fool of yourself again.

People that blame Obama for the economy know NOTHING of finance or economics.

What caused all the things you mentioned?

Did Gramm, Leach and Bliley (Rep, Rep, Rep) have anything to do with it? What about George Bush giving billionaires and corporations historically low effective tax rates while fighting 2 wars and permanently increasing the deficit with Medicare Acts? What about SOX (2002, Rep, Rep), the response to the Enron disaster? What about the SEC allowing those firms who lobbied the Republican administration ($billions), unlimited leverage ratios? What about conveniently avoiding the fact these banks were in violation of the net capital rule in 2004?

Sorry but Republicans revved the engine BEYOND the red line, stuffed a brick on the accelerator, and then said to Democrats, "OK, you drive".

Obama had NO CHANCE fiscally in his first term, nor, IMO, does he (or anyone else) have that great a shot in the next term either. I fear you are correct - there will be QE four etc, etc after the election.

When Buffet said in 2009 that he couldn't see the recovery starting before 2017, and the IMF recently declared that we (the west) are all facing a "lost decade" (like Japan in the 1990s) you should be realistically cognizant of the s-storm we are in.

I am not a Democrat but 80% of our problems were caused by Republicans (the other 20% is President Clinton and the CFMA (2000)). If it wasn't for Republicans in the 2000s neither the US or UK would be in the fiscally diabolical positions they are in now. FACT.

Mr Romney is just another self-serving piece of crap Republican. He doesn't know about tax breaks for companies who send jobs overseas? So much for creating jobs. And only about 3% of our total debt is owed to China, so what is Mr Romney talking about? Like most ding bat Republicans he doesn't have a fact to his name, but he will claim he does - Mission Accomplished.

Romney had such a disastrous lead up, a solid performance took on an extra edge. We didn't expect it – I doubt Obama did either.

Barack, coherency and conviction is what's required. Get yourself to an old, beaten down Siberian snow cabin, cut Michelle and the kids off and drag Uncle Paulie around in a sleigh - amid a 80's action montage, with a killer Survivor score. In short, prepare and show up throwing bombs. He ain't so tough.

In fairness, Obama was always going to be more vulnerable during the domestic debate. Conversing with a town hall and foreign policy; c'mon, surely Mitt won't close polling weightier numbers.

I have been waiting for Romney to yet again shift his position - this time to the center. He was to the far right during primaries and has finally tried to come back to the center where I believe he genuinely finds comfort. One could argue he is a flip flopper who has no integrity or ideology except that of winning. I would argue it not him but the very nature of US politics that forces a pragmatic centrist to waiver to the far right or to the far left to appease the partisan base and win primaries. Fact of the matter is primaries are meant for the partisan and to my mind the staunch ideologues and to win them, one has to play to the gallery. Romney had no choice but to do that. His record speaks of him as a center right pragmatist. He has proved himself to be a great taskmaster, if not a leader. I wont say he deserves to be the President but compared to Obama he definitely would make a better president.

True, Obama inherited a mess but he has only made it messier. He had the senate and house for 2 years under democratic control, yet they could not get a budget passed. Most of the legislation passed has been extremely partisan and so vague that even the enforcing institutions of those legislations are finding it hard to write those legislation into rules. Bailouts were necessary but all bailouts were handed out without asking for any major compromise or reform in those sectors. Auto bailout hugely favored the unions to keep the key vote bank intact. Deficits have balooned, stimulus failed. Regulations have become to heavy handed business are more or less suffocating. He has not even been able to keep the promises he made out of his democratic ideology - closing Gitmo, protecting civil liberties and freedom. He has time and again taken extreme constitutional steps that may be argued to be legally fine but clearly in violation of the spirit. His signature health care reform survived the test of constitution as a tax not as a reform measure. I mean I can go on with his failures.

I doubt if US can afford 4 more years of Obama. Romney, though not the best of Republican candidates, is better than Obama for the country.

Compared to Obama, Romney probably wouldn't be much , if any , worse in the domestic area. In foreign policy, however, if Romney followed even 1/10 of the nonsense he has spouted, the US would be in big trouble. Democracy is already in trouble with Obama's secret "kill list" and assumption of the power to kill anyone , including American citizens, anywhere in the world without a shred of due process. What would Romney do with Obama's newly created Presidential power?

Tried and 'got it done' are two entirely different things. In life, there are actions or excuses. Obama has been a President of excuses, no or little action. Thats why his entire campaign has focused on going after trivial things like Romney's tax returns, ridiculous connections of his PE record to deaths, his offshore accounts etc etc.

For all the democratic rumbling about Citizens United and the Super PACs, reality of the day is Democrats are outspending Republicans by a big margin at least till now. No Democrat realy bothered to criticize the role of money in elections when the sae Obama outspend Mccain 3 to 1. Talk of hypocricy.

Let us not pretend Democrats are above the line - they were to first one to sell themselves to big money interests of Unions and the AARPs. Obama himself was the darling of wall street donors. He has no issue taking money from Wall St and then bashing them the next day.

I claim not to be a right winger or a left wing hater - i identify with the center right ideology and pragmatism.

Do you have any actual facts to support your deluded assertions? Let me take a guess and say no. The Republican Congress has done nothing but try to drag America into the failure they are as a party. Republicans couldn't pay for or win the two wars they started, but now they are competent? The offshore accounts of a Presidential candidate who claims America is too far in debt but is clearly freeloading by not paying taxes aren't trivial. Stealing someone's pension for personal gain isn't trivial. You are center right? That is funny. You are in the center of ignorant.

I think Romney has her heart in the right place with regards to domestic issues. Tax rates need to come down coupled with tax code reform and removal of ridiculous deductions. As he mentioned yesterday, regulations need to be there but regulations need to be smart and effective, not cumbersome, restrictive and vague. Entitlement programs are more or less on their way to bankruptcy unless reformed and one could only hope a republican would try do that more effectively than a democrat. US needs to aggressively go after free trade agreements - China has been aggressive in this area and left US behind. China needs to be dealt with for currency manipulations - current situation is not a level playing field.

Healthcare is an area where none of the parties have a clue on what to do - focus has to be on reducing the healthcare costs and then on who pays for it. Mandating insurance for everyone or leaving people completely at the mercy of private insurance is not the solution. One has to relentlessly focus on cutting costs - pharma and health care providers lobby would never let that happen.

On foreign policy, i think everyone now realizes US is no longer the sole superpower. China does have a huge influence, so as EU and emerging India, Russia, Turkey and Brazil. Even if one were to say none of these countries have global influence, they do have strong regional influence. US needs to effectively develop partnerships for long term with like minded nations. Romney has not really elaborated his position on foreign policy except the usual rhetoric to please the base.

Again as I said, he is not the best Republican candidate but to me better than his opponent in the present race.

None of my assertions are delusional - they are all facts or my interpretation of events. agreed republican congress has been operating with one single minded ridiculous objective of obstructing any and everything Obama has to say but can you pls enlighten me what did Obama achieve in the full 2 years he had control of both Senate and the House except for railroading the healthcare legislation and passing the utterly vague and un-implementable dodd frank regulations. His FY 2012 budget went down 97-0 in the Senate (Controlled by Democrats) and his FY 2013 budget went down 414-0 in the House. Now you could argue its Congress's job to pass a budget and not Presidents but then that would be making an excuse- wont it?

If I remember correctly, Obama voted for the Afghan war but against Iraq - I agree both the wars were ill conceived and were primarily a result for the yearning for vengeance. Obama is trying to bring them an end but again ending them in a haste is only going to make things more volatile in that region. This is one issue where no one has a clue what and how to end the wars without exposing US and allies to any harm.

Anyway - you seem to be deluding yourself by calling other delusional. Here are the facts to go over for you to get over the pot and regain senses:

The president came off as presidential. Romney came off as a confidence riddles new comer with either a dissonance towards his own past or purposefully clueless. That the media interpret this as a win, shows how far from engaging and intelligent conversation the nation has moved. Justin Bieber could win under these terms.

A clear win for Romney by all the instant polls of the first debate and even left wing pundits. Obama looked like Nixon in the 1960s debate when Kennedy looked and sounded presidential. Obama clearly is a President who enjoys golf and parties with Hollywood types but only goes to 60% of daily security briefings. He looked like he hated to be at the debate. Romney would attend every security briefing and get congressional leaders of both stripes into the White House to get the economy moving again. Ata go Mitt!!

I wasn't aware you were a friend of the President, and knew his social schedule so intimately... oh, wait, you're just mouthing off. Maybe Obama looked that way because he actually had more important things to do - he is President after all, and I doubt the debates can be objectively looked at as important.

Also, don't forget, this is playing out a LOT like the 2004 presidential election, just with the party of incumbant/challenger reversed.

Romney would spend 99% of his time conspiring with industrial giants on how best to exploit his new position for (their) personal gain.

Obama goes out of his way to AVOID the superficial Hollywood types and lobbyists. Obama emails me every day, well, someone electronically forges his signature at the end, BUT, these emails are competitions to dine with the President. While Obama is eating with regular and unemployed folk and picking up the tab, Mitt Romney is dining with billionaires and lobbyists and letting THEM pick up the cheque.

Romney would sell his own grandmother for money and power. Make him President and the top 1% will become the top 0.1%. And guess what? If you don't know Mitt or aren't highly connected with the GOP, the top 0.1% sure as heck won't include you....

I think the reaction to this presidential debate is a perfect illustration of the difference in political culture between the US and its neighbours in general, and of the lack of resonance that Republican discourse in particular has overseas.
I was flabbergasted to find out that many commentators were saying that Romney had come out ahead in the debate, and this observation is very much at odds with what I saw and heard.
I live in Canada and watched the debate on CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national broadcaster). To generalise, CBC’s audience is fairly centrist and is probably quite representative of the Canadian population as a whole, and it is telling what the online twitter polls displayed on the screen during the debate showed. It wasn’t even close: 18% of viewers thought Romney was winning the debate, 76% thought Obama was winning, with a handful who were undecided.
Now Canadians are very close neighbours to the US; the Anglophones among them speak the same language as Americans and are constantly exposed to US media and popular culture, and you would think that they would relate more closely to one of the two dominant streams of American political discourse, but that does not seem to be the case.
To me, and so it seems to many of my fellow Canadians, Obama’s statements were much better thought out. They provided more detailed plans, reasoning, and explanations. In contrast, Romney’s tended to make statements that reflected Republican goals and repeated some mantras (e.g. fewer taxes = more jobs), but lacked (and perhaps consciously avoided) substance and others that were somewhat hypocritical. To the disinterested foreign observer that I am, Obama came across as more reasonable, knowledgeable and truthful. But perhaps Romney’s objective was not to win on substance, but to make an emotional appeal to those who already share his world-view…
There would appear to be some fundamentally different assumptions about politics in the US that have a strong effect on the perception of performance. One that does not travel well is a fundamental mistrust of government that seems quite ingrained (and can be traced back to the Federalist Papers) and I don’t think is as strong in any other liberal democracy. In Canada at least, Obama won by a landslide last night.

I think if you are interested in the substantive policies of the candidates, you read the newspaper. The debate is largely about superficiality. Americans want their president to be a tough guy who can stand up to attacks, both on him and on the country. The superficial viewing of the debate showed Romney attacking and the president bowing his head and taking it. This is why everyone in the States thinks that Romney won.
Perhaps the difference in perception is because Canadians are more sensible than americans and they are looking only for the substance of the candidates' policies. Another explanation, however, might be that americans are more media savvy and know that a president has to be able to perform as part of his role in the bully pulpit and as the "leader of the free world." It may be that americans know that you also have to master this role to be a good president. It could also be that for a lot of people, they are not willing to invest the time in figuring out the candidates platforms and they want to achieve a gut feeling on who is more like them or who is more like the type of president that they want.

The CBC is anything but "centrist"...it is a flaming leftwing LIBERAL state media and I would be shocked if their polling showed anything less than an Obama victory - Obama did not win in Canada - he only scored with the leftwing viewers on CBC - Obama could have been brought onto stage on a stretcher and CBC would still proclaim him to be the winner.

I think your view of what is left wing might be a little coloured by your perspective. It is true that you would not find many neocons or supporters of the religious right amongst them, but then again, I think we can agree that they belong to the right. I doubt that anyone who was really left wing would think CBC was socialist - hence my view that it is generally centrist. Your comments seem inclined to the polemical and are not that constructive.
Remember that nomenclature is different in different countries: in Canada, "liberal" means centrist (the social-democratic left is represented by the democrats); in Europe, it means right-wing (yes, George W. Bush is a liberal in Europe); and in the US, it means centre-left.
Note also that CBC did not "proclaim" Obama the winner - the interviewers were talking to American commentators who were for the most relaying that Romney had done well. It's just the viewers who voted that way.

Without a doubt, Romney won by unanimous decision. Those who are scratching their heads about the decision clearly do not understand presidential politics. The media narrative is also clueless and inane. Romney and Obama were in a statistical dead heat both nationwide and in several battleground polls coming into the debate. Obama's convention bounce had already dissipated. Yet, the sappytwaddling media which includes the Economist was ready to write off the Romney campaign after routinely deriding him for being a lackluster candidate. Who's lackluster now?

The race was virtually tied by accounts of the reputable pollsters and had Obama ahead by four points or so when factoring in polls that forecast a Democratic turnout advantage that exceeds that of 2008, a highly unlikely scenario. Add to the analysis that polls taken prior to the end of September have very low predictive value, and it becomes clear how foolish the media narrative has been as well as the credulous dupes who buy into it. Now the Obots are clinging desperately to the 'electoral lock' or 'swing state advantage' that the media believes will save Obama's bacon. Another foolish myth perpetrated by the increasingly distrusted liberal establishment. Apparently, the smartest people in America can't seem to understand the concept of low predictive power and that in politics, a candidate is never really out of it. The old maxim still stands: The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day.

Why people think Obama won is because nobody likes Romney. If your favourite boxer loses on points you will always make the argument that he was cheated, that the other guy didn't deserve to win.

Why the media seem to take Obama's side all the time is because there are only a handful of Republicans who can actually read and write, and all of them were busy doing Romney's speech last night!
Many Democrats and a global group of "anti-Republicans" use their democratic freedoms to convey their own opinions, not just regurgitate what the GOP tells them.

Yea nothing short of total disillusionment. I watched the last debates (Bush vs Kerry) and it was like watching a teacher (Kerry) debate with a 1st year college student (Bush). Kerry hands down showed vastly greater aptitude for public speaking and some might even argue vastly greater intelligence and eloquence too. Made no difference, say something too smart on American TV and you have instantly lost half the audience.

I have seen Romney speak many times and he always seemed to be a little nervous, a little evasive, like he is trying to hide something. All Romney's slogans and sound bites sound incredibly contrived, like a school kid regurgitating what they have been told for an exam. It is clear to me that Romney is NOT the master of his own ideas and speeches, he is a puppet just like Bush. Anyone who votes for this charlatan is asking for a 3rd Bush era.

Obama is a showman with the heart of an old-school constitutionalist. You can tell when he speaks that not only is he playing politics but he is preaching what he believes. I certainly don't agree with everything the President says - I have serious concerns over auto-enrolment, which has a socialist twang (no more so than auto-enrolling for pensions in the UK) and I have concerns about Obama selling himself to the pink vote. I don't care what anyone says or thinks, as a straight man you cannot naturally be so supportive and understanding of non-straight men. Still, these things are socio-political/religious and nothing to do with the single most important factor to many people and the nation - THE ECONOMY.

On the economy, Romney is beholden to the same corporate dinosaurs that Bush I and Bush II were controlled by and further back still with Reagan, Reaganomics and the start of the great American decline. Republicanism since 1980 is not so different to old-school aristocracy - the aristocracy which forced the Founding Fathers to war and to create a new constitution to prevent aristocrats from ever controlling the American people again.

It shocks me to my core to see modern day Americans VOTE to be enslaved by money and elitists. This is NOT the ethos which inspired Francis Hutcheson to write the legal framework for a colony to rise up against their masters, nor is it the philosophy on which American independence was based or the Constitution written.

Someone please remove these Republican idiots from my life before they trample and pervert the philosophies of my ancestors, which made America GREAT (and cost 1 million lives), any further than they already have.

Bookmakers reduced Obama's odds of winning from 80% to 73%: that is not being Back in the Game, that is avoiding being humiliated. Those debates only interest people at The Economist. Obama disappointed massively no question about it, but Romney still appears as a stiff weirdo and that 's what ultimately will count. Obama 51.5 | Romney 48.5

Obama was wooden and rambling while Romney was engaging and upbeat so Romney in a walk on appearences alone. However, on overall truthiness, if that were a performance measure it would be Obama hands down as Romney contradicted prior position statements over and over again. Surprising that Obama didn't act surprised and call him on it.

Obama was ill-prepared, tentative, and performed poorly - failing to confront Romney with his record of non-stop flip-flops, his misrepresentations, and the most serious consequences of a Romney administration. America was poorly served by our president in the first debate.